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stuporfly 's review for:
The Spy Who Loved Me
by Ian Fleming
I'd hoped to run through the James Bond series guided by the Henry Chancellor chronology (augmented by works by other authors following the death of Ian Fleming in 1964), but shifting to audiobooks for the four days of my cross-country drive made that, if not impossible, certainly too inconvenient to manage. It would have been ambitious anyway, jumping from novels to short stories, and in one case reading half of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, then a short story (007 In New York), then chapters 10-15 of The Spy Who Loved Me, followed by the remainder of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. During the final leg of my journey I was enjoying David Tennant's narration of On Her Majesty's Secret Service too much to have tried to pull it off anyway, but I was unable to borrow the edition of The Spy Who Loved Me narrated by Rosamund Pike from either the NYPL or Brooklyn Public Library through the Libby app in time to make it work anyway.
Instead, I jumped to chapter 10 of the novel itself after settling into our new home in Oakland, and I remembered why I didn't like the book when I read it as a teenager. Fleming deserves credit for trying something different with this book, for showing us action from a first person perspective rather than the third person. The problem is that it doesn't really work. As was the case with the opening 10 or 11 chapters of From Russia With Love, Bond doesn't even show up in The Spy Who Loved Me until well into the book. I knew that going into it, and adhering to the Griswold chronology I read a summary of what happened prior to Bond's arrival and moved on to the novel with the 10th chapter. As such, The Spy Who Loved Me was more of a short story like those found in For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy & The Living Daylights.
The plot from Bond's arrival onward worked well as a short story, too: Bond punctures a tire in the Adirondacks and seeks a room for the night at The Dream Pines Motor Court, inadvertently stumbling upon a mob-owned property about to be burned to the ground for the insurance money. Viv Michel, a young woman charged with keeping an eye on the property, is due to be murdered by a pair of thugs, with her body intended to be found in the charred ruins of the motel, where blame for the fire would fall upon her. Bond correctly senses something is awry, and I'm sure you know how it all shakes out in the end.
Michel seems an engaging enough character, but I'm not sorry I didn't read her backstory, which is apparently largely comprised of soft-core trysts that ended badly. Seeing Bond through her eyes - through anyone's first person perspective - only works for so long; we can be mystified at his ingenuity or toughness, but the nuance of what Bond does to survive is lost as he disappears into the night.
The Spy Who Loved Me is, by a significant margin, my least favorite James Bond novel...at least so far. I fully understand why years later filmmakers used the title and none of the plot.
Instead, I jumped to chapter 10 of the novel itself after settling into our new home in Oakland, and I remembered why I didn't like the book when I read it as a teenager. Fleming deserves credit for trying something different with this book, for showing us action from a first person perspective rather than the third person. The problem is that it doesn't really work. As was the case with the opening 10 or 11 chapters of From Russia With Love, Bond doesn't even show up in The Spy Who Loved Me until well into the book. I knew that going into it, and adhering to the Griswold chronology I read a summary of what happened prior to Bond's arrival and moved on to the novel with the 10th chapter. As such, The Spy Who Loved Me was more of a short story like those found in For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy & The Living Daylights.
The plot from Bond's arrival onward worked well as a short story, too: Bond punctures a tire in the Adirondacks and seeks a room for the night at The Dream Pines Motor Court, inadvertently stumbling upon a mob-owned property about to be burned to the ground for the insurance money. Viv Michel, a young woman charged with keeping an eye on the property, is due to be murdered by a pair of thugs, with her body intended to be found in the charred ruins of the motel, where blame for the fire would fall upon her. Bond correctly senses something is awry, and I'm sure you know how it all shakes out in the end.
Michel seems an engaging enough character, but I'm not sorry I didn't read her backstory, which is apparently largely comprised of soft-core trysts that ended badly. Seeing Bond through her eyes - through anyone's first person perspective - only works for so long; we can be mystified at his ingenuity or toughness, but the nuance of what Bond does to survive is lost as he disappears into the night.
The Spy Who Loved Me is, by a significant margin, my least favorite James Bond novel...at least so far. I fully understand why years later filmmakers used the title and none of the plot.